Click here for the Shelbyville Times-Gazette Story

I’ll be visiting Pleasant Heights Baptist Church in Columbia next Wednesday, May 6th.

Tornadoes can have winds of more than 300 mph

The statistics tell a troubling story:  Tornado deaths are on the rise.  Since 1994, the number of people killed during tornadoes has nearly quadrupled from around 36 in 2004 to 126 in 2008.   While 2008 was a banner year for tornadoes, 2004-2007 did not see a signicant rise in the number of twisters, only deaths.  What’s the cause of this?

With better warnings than ever before (nearly every tornado that touches down in the U.S. has a warning before it moves through a community) and more ways to get the word out via television, radio, weather radio, internet, text messages, etc., the clues point to three potential answers:

1. People no longer take warnings seriously.

2. People don’t know what to do when tornadoes are imminent.

3.  People don’t have a safe place to seek shelter inside their homes.

The purpose of StormSafe is to help people:

1.  Understand the importance of Warnings.

2.  Find ways of getting needed weather information 24 hours a day.

3.  Figure out the safest place to be in their homes during storms and tornadoes.

In future posts, I’ll be tackling these issues one by one.